October 17th, 2019 

Hello there!
How are you doing? Yesterday, in class, my classmates and I had to make our professor sign a full-time proof status and suddenly, it hit me: I should talk about these kinds of things here as well!

What is it?

Well, SPEAQ is the Socitété pour le Perfectionnement de l’Enseignement de l’Anglais, langue seconde, au Québec. You can find out more about this organisation here on their official website or even here on their Facebook page.

These are conferences every once in awhile where teachers who teach English as Second Language in Quebec (or, I guess, in any places really) gather around to share with each other some of their research or observation or even just a project that worked so well.

There are two types of conferences within SPEAQ.

• SPEAQ on campus, is basically a smaller SPEAQ conference.
  • These happen once and they are, as far as I know, only one day.
  • I think that students in the Student Council of each university organize it?
    • • Sometimes, there are goodies from sponsors or even prizes for some people to win at the end of the day.
• Annual SPEAQ conference
  • As of the writing of this, it is happening in Montreal, at Place Bonaventure this November 2019.
    • Aside: By the time you see this post, the conference will be done, but some information from this post may still help you out, so keep reading!
    • This year, this particular conference’s theme is #YourPotential as you can see on the image here. I really look forward to going and finding out more about it!
  • Typically, the annual conference is longer, it can last three days or less. And, of course,

Why does it matter for us as TESL students?

Well, my dears, in my TESL program at my university (so maybe it’s not required at yours!), it is required of us that we go to conferences at least once per school year that we attend the school for.

For example, if you are students for 4 years, you have 4 conferences to go to. If you are students for 6 years, you have 6 conferences to go to, I believe. 

While you can totally go to a SPEAQ on campus, you are required, within the duration of your academic career in the program, to go through ONE annual conference, if I remember correctly.

• My recommendation is that you keep the receipt to each of these places that you go to. This way, you prove that you have gone and you can put it into your Professional Portfolio.
• Another recommendation I have is for you to write a paragraph of what you learned from your day or from the presentations you’ve attended. In this way, you can help connect what you learned to the theory you’ve learned in class, just in case they actually need this.

It is pretty costly unless you are a full-time student! There is a form which you can have any of your professors (or the directors or advisors at school) can sign to attest that you are a full-time student. Look out for that one, because you get some student discounts!

I hope this was somewhat helpful!
Are there any information that I misunderstood? Please, tell me in the comments below!
PV